Chapter 20: A Classic, Hearty Dish
The second day of business came to a close.
After a long, exhausting day of labor, Master Chef Ling was finally ready to enjoy the fruits of her work.
Grabbing a roasted sweet potato, she munched on it while browsing the system interface.
Aside from a roasted potato for breakfast and a few sample bites while frying the pork cracklings, she hadn’t eaten a single thing all day.
She simply hadn’t had the time.
This counted as her second meal of the day.
Scarfing down a piping-hot roasted sweet potato on a ravenous stomach felt downright sublime.
Using the Item Exchange Box as a stool, Ling Jing leaned back and swiped through the floating panels.
First, she tapped into the Quest tab.
Daily Quest: [Rudimentary Stall] Rank — Daily Revenue (443/200) (Completed)
Naturally, it was completed—more than doubled, in fact.
—The revenue shown on the Cash Box wasn’t a daily tally, but a cumulative grand total.
The displayed 553 included yesterday’s earnings.
Subtracting the previous 110 left exactly today’s 443.
The system’s quest rewards, of course, were not counted toward commercial revenue.
A green, clickable [Claim Reward] prompt appeared at the bottom of the quest panel, looking for all the world like a mobile game menu.
Ling Jing tapped claim.
[Congratulations! You have received the Daily Reward: 40 Points!]
She wasn’t surprised in the slightest by the system’s stingy rewards.
Her point balance now stood at 483.
The Cash Box had also hit its revenue milestone for an upgrade. She decided to check how the cost-free Cash Box could be improved first.
As before, two branches lay before her.
One offered a bonus multiplier to the Cash Box’s collected revenue, while the other boosted the Item Exchange Box.
Ling Jing still had no intention of tacking a flat bonus onto her intake. Instead, she turned her attention to the Item Exchange Box’s upgrade options.
Today’s business had made one thing abundantly clear: the single best way to drive up revenue was to ensure her customers had money in their pockets.
Only with coins in hand would they spend continuously. Prioritizing short-term skimming over expanding the resource pool at this critical juncture was no different from drinking poison to quench a thirst—it was unsustainable in the long run.
Ling Jing’s finger hovered over the panel. Looking at the two upgrade paths branching from the Item Exchange Box—[Expand Recycling Scope] and [Increase Unit Payout within Recycled Scope]—she genuinely hesitated for a moment.
In the end, she opted for the former.
A new category was added to the Item Exchange Box’s accepted contents: [Inedible Mutated Flora].
Once the upgrade went through, the upgrade button on the Cash Box grayed out, and the counter shifted.
[553/800]
The next revenue threshold was eight hundred, which she would easily hit tomorrow.
Next time, she could upgrade the unit payout rates.
Ling Jing intended to advance both upgrade branches of the Item Exchange Box in parallel, pairing broader scope with higher payouts; both were equally vital.
She couldn’t afford to be short-sighted.
Having settled the Cash Box, Ling Jing turned to the other piece of hardware under Equipment Upgrade: the Roasting Machine.
She opened the upgrade details.
Unlike the multifaceted Cash Box, the roaster’s upgrade tree was straightforward, simply detailing the next tier’s perks and point costs.
[Tier 2 Roaster: Base capacity multiplied by 2. New feature: Automatically refills ingredients according to preset quantities (provided sufficient raw stock) — 100 Points.]
The upgrade offered automated refilling and double capacity.
Quite a good deal.
Upgrade!
Without hesitation, Ling Jing tapped the button.
[Congratulations, your Roaster has been upgraded to Tier 2!]
The notification popped up and was dismissed, revealing the requirements for the subsequent tier.
[Tier 3 Roaster: Base capacity multiplied by 3; automatically refills ingredients according to preset quantities (provided sufficient raw stock). New features: Automatic roasting, automatic dispensing, expanded overflow food cache (50 slots) — 200 Points.]
Oh?
Tier 2 added one function, while Tier 3 added two.
And they happened to be precisely what Ling Jing needed most.
Automatic loading, automatic roasting, and automatic dispensing would free her hands entirely!
Looking at her remaining 383 points, she decisively triggered the upgrade once more.
[Congratulations, your Roaster has been upgraded to Tier 3!]
[Tier 4 Roaster: Base capacity multiplied by 6; automatically refills ingredients according to preset quantities (provided sufficient raw stock). New features: Automatic roasting, automatic dispensing, expanded overflow food cache (300 slots), roasting time reduced by half — 300 Points.]
Ling Jing halted her upgrades here.
Evidently, the jump from Tier 3 to Tier 4 primarily enhanced volume and speed.
A Tier 3 roaster could already handle 78 potatoes and 30 sweet potatoes in a single run, which was more than enough for her current customer volume.
The upgraded roaster had expanded noticeably in size. A stainless-steel counter was added to the front—evidently the dispensing bay—along with an interface panel mounted on top.
The panel was fully equipped. Ling Jing tapped it, and a small screen lit up.
Roaster: On/Off; Auto-Refill: On/Off; Auto-Roast: On/Off; Auto-Dispense: On/Off; Roasting Time: Potatoes – 23 minutes, Sweet Potatoes – 40 minutes; Food Cache (Roasted Potatoes: 4, Roasted Sweet Potatoes: 2).
The cache held the leftovers from closing up shop today.
Testing the waters, she turned on the newly upgraded roaster and tapped the toggle for Auto-Dispense.
Whoosh—
Four piping-hot roasted potatoes and two steaming roasted sweet potatoes materialized across the counter in front of the roaster.
They took up exactly half of the available space.
From the looks of it, the roaster’s dispensing platform could accommodate four roasted sweet potatoes and eight roasted potatoes. While smaller than the tricycle’s main platform, its automated replenishment made it more than adequate.
Satisfied, Ling Jing shut off the roaster. With another whoosh, the potatoes and sweet potatoes vanished from the dispensing bay, neatly tucked back into the temporary cache.
Excellent. The upgraded machine was remarkably smart; these three hundred points were well spent.
There was no pressing need for a Tier 4 upgrade right now. She could revisit it later when foot traffic surged and throughput became a bottleneck.
That left her with 183 points.
Ling Jing navigated over to the Recipes tab.
Following the acquisition of the Item Exchange Box, a new sub-category had appeared here: [Ingredient Inventory].
Potatoes, sweet potatoes, eggplants, Chinese cabbage, pork, scallions, string beans.
Today’s harvest had been exceptionally bountiful.
The pork cracklings had sold remarkably well—all twenty-six cartons were cleaned out completely.
Now that she had rendered lard on hand, Ling Jing didn’t plan on frying cracklings again tomorrow.
She wanted to cook a classic, hearty dish.
With a recipe in mind, she tapped into Equipment Upgrade, spending thirty points to upgrade the small portable gas stove into a full-sized natural gas cooktop.
She then spent ten points to upgrade the iron wok into a commercial-grade oversized wok.
Next, she entered the Mall, scanning the ingredients on offer.
Found it!
—Sweet potato vermicelli: ten points per five hundred grams.
She bought two catties for twenty points.
That would be plenty.
That classic dish simply couldn’t do without glass noodles.
“Did you see the way Rhodes walked back today? He looked thrilled out of his mind.”
“I did… And Jia Wen’s little brother came back from the west wall, too.”
“How bizarre. Outside the west wall is practically a desolate wasteland. Why did so many people return from there today looking like they’re in top form?”
“I heard a rumor through the grapevine,” someone murmured, leaning in close to whisper.
…
“Well? What were they actually up to out there?”
“Man, am I glad I tailed them! Let me tell you…”
“Are you serious? I have to go tell Walter and the boys right away…”
Inside the city:
As the customers of the Chinese Restaurant returned home, the news spread like wildfire, passing rapidly from one person to the next.
Inside a spacious wooden lodge:
Knock, knock.
The door was rapped twice.
“Who is it?”
“Me!”
Someone inside unlatched the door, admitting a man wearing a red band tied around his arm.
The one who opened the door cursed under his breath, “Curfew patrol is about to start. What the hell are you running around for?”
“I caught wind of some weird news,” the man replied.
“What is it?”
The man seated by the table looked up. With slanted eyes, high cheekbones, and a ruthless cast to his features, he was the very man known to others as “Mad Dog.”
The newcomer leaned down, whispering low into his ear.
“Mad Dog” arched an eyebrow. “Out west?”
